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One of the serious problems with Vista was the half dozen plus versions. That caused market confusion as well as code bloat, since every version had the same code with features locked out in the lower end versions.

That is just too long. I called ahead, made sure that the local Apple Store had the phone my wife wanted in stock. We get there, on a Wednesday night, and have to wait for a blue shirt to free up. When one of the blue shirts finally does free up, he manages to get the new iPhone assigned to my number (I have a gen one iPhone and see no reason to upgrade), instead of my wife’s number.

Of course, they can’t fix the problem there, so we have to hike to the AT&T store, wait twenty more minutes for someone there to free up, and then another 45+ minutes for the AT&T rep to reset my account back to the way it was. That should have taken five minutes, tops!

Instead, it was a major operation. The AT&T rep had to program a new sim card for my phone! Then the obnoxious process of having to register my iphone through iTunes once again.

So over half of my time was wasted because Apple screwed up my AT&T account, and I still don’t have the iPhone I came there to buy for my wife.

I understand that AT&T wants to make sure it makes its money back on the iPhones it is paying part of the cost on, but they have gone to new lengths to make the process difficult and un-consumer friendly for those of us who are actually trying to buy the Apple iPhone legally.

I’ve been a customer of AT&T Mobile (as they are now calling themselves) for over a decade. I have five numbers on my account. Never before have I run into a case where I was trying to sign up for a more expensive service plan and AT&T refused to take my money.

Until last night. AT&T’s ovewheleming desire to make sure they squeeze every penny out of the iPhone rates means that they are putting the screws to long time loyal customers like myself.

The only bright point was that someone at the Apple Store finally figured out what customer service was. I managed to get the iPhone for my wife, with it actually assigned to her number, after just over two hours.

I’ll talk about the anti-consumer changes AT&T made to the rate plans later. That’s a big reason I’m sticking with first gen iPhone.